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 As the fastest growing fossil fuel, coal has added almost as much to the world's absolute energy supply in the last ten years as all other sources combined. Burned gratuitously by the gigaton, coal power plays a dominant and still-growing role in generating the world's electricity.
(Picture Credit-Coal miner Lee Hipshire in 1976, shortly after emerging from a mine in Logan County, W.Va., at the end of his shift. A few years later, Lee took early retirement because of pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. He died at 57.)
Coal Deposits
Coal is a widely distributed energy resource. Reserves can be found on every continent aside from Antarctica, although they are heavily concentrated in a handful of nations.
The countries with the largest known reserves are the United States, China and Russia, collectively possessing about half of the world's recoverable tonnage. These three—along with Germany, India and Australia—account for about eighty percent of economically viable deposits globally.
The United States has far more underground than any other single (Read More....)
 Often times, one does not think about the quality of air he or she breathes. It is, however, a critical issue when it comes time for the Olympics games or government conventions. In general, heavily populated cities suffer the most from dangerous air quality, with higher cases of lung diseases reported every year. The most polluted cities tend to be located in developing regions due to poor environmental regulations and dirtier cars, factories, and power plants. Surprisingly, the list of urban areas with the worst air quality does not include the economic giants one usually hears about: Beijing, Bangkok, Mexico City, and Chongqing, for instance. The reason many of these countries are not the most polluted is they have taken many steps to improve the quality of air by reducing gas emissions and passing new environmental laws. While the air in L.A. is bad, it is far, far, far worse in other parts of the world (1). Smaller cities in South Asia hold the top 10 rankings for the world’s poorest air quality:
1. Ahwaz, Iran
2. Ulan Bator, Mongolia
3. Sanadaj, Iran
4. Ludhiana, India
5. Quetta, (Read More....)
 You can read, hear, and see this kind of message all over conventional and new media. Everyone is telling everyone else to be conservative about our resources, to be more efficient, to pitch in with the effort in saving our environment. It has become part and parcel of modern human morality to be conscientious of the way one treats the environment and consumes resources. To be callous towards these initiatives immediately makes you a bad, bad person.
Irony of ironies, the funding that supports the loudest pro-conservation voices are often from the gigantic multinational corporations who are most likely doing the most damage to the Earth’s capacity to support the biosphere (that includes us humans). So, the top polluters and resource hogs of the globe are telling us not to consume so much even as the prime directive of every single for-profit corporation is to expand, acquire, and grow despite the environmental and social consequences?
The outright hypocrisy is enough to make you toss the entire message out of the window and just (Read More....)
 When I grew up plastic bottles and containers were not wide spread. Glass bottles and jars along with boxes were mainly used as containers for items we would pick up at the store. You did not hear a lot about recycling then but even during these years my parents were always teaching us kids to be conscientious about such things.
The main way my folks encouraged us to take care of our environment was just ingraining it into us from the time we were small. Mom was always pointing out different plants and trees and giving us the names. She shared what the different types of plants were and the care they needed. She was also pointing out trash to us and would go out of her way to pick it up. Before anti-littering laws, signs, and commercials there was mom. She was adamant that we not litter but beyond that she would see a parking lot or a beach with litter and we just knew we were going to be cleaning it up. That was just how we were raised.
This is what I see as the main way to encourage our children to save our environment. Teach them from the time they are small, make it a habit just like brushing your (Read More....)
 Authored By Dave Webb
Astronomers with imagination have a nightmare.
An asteroid came very close to colliding with the Earth recently. Asteroid 2012 XE54, discovered Sunday, December 2nd, 2012 came within 140,000 miles of a collision with our planet yesterday Wednesday, December 11, 2012. The asteroid is small. It is about half the size of one that supposedly flattened 800 square miles of forest when it exploded above Siberia's Podkamennaya Tunguska River in 1908. This little rock came between us and the moon. It orbits all the way past Mars into the asteroid belt in a strange elliptical orbit. The clock is ticking. This time it missed. Next time it might not. These rocks are capable of destroying an entire state if they happen to hit the Earth. The rock is about 120 feet across. Its small size made it invisible. Only when we had a close approach did anyone even know it was there.
If this asteroid hits the moon, it could actually change the orbit of the moon either closer or further away from us. No one really knows what the effect of a direct collision would be. (Read More....)
 by MN Gordon, Economic Prism
Last Wednesday night, following the Presidential debate, we stepped outside our back stoop and were greeted with the displeasure of a sulfurous odor. It singed our nose hairs. It burned our eyes. We could practically taste it.
At first we thought it was migrational tailings of the gigantic egg President Obama had just laid in Denver wafting over the Rocky Mountains, through the inland desert states, and across the Los Angeles Basin…before settling over Long Beach and the San Pedro Bay. But after a little reconnaissance we learned a hiccup at one of the gasoline refineries in the harbor had belched forth the foul odor.
By Thursday morning the air was fresh. Yet on our way to work we learned that a series of hiccups at refineries across the state had resulted in rapidly escalating gas prices. A power outage at Exxon Mobile’s Torrance refinery limited its service all week. Plus, Chevron’s Richmond refinery has been at reduced production after an August 6 (Read More....)
 A drought is a certain period of time that consists of abnormally dry weather that can cause serious problems. Droughts can be deadly because of the lack of precipitation impacts agricultural. The Drought of 2012 has proven to be just that.
The Drought of 2012 is the worst drought the United States has experienced since 1956. A drought doesn’t mean a hot and dry summer, agricultural and livestock are being affected directly. Crops are dying quickly especially corn, which means you can expect corn prices to rise. Farmers have started selling their livestock earlier this summer and more of them. With the crops dying and lack of water, ranchers and farmers are having extreme difficulty feeding their livestock. Ranchers are spending lots of time and money bringing in water to keep their animals alive. As a result of the drought more livestock are being slaughtered than ever and in return with the overabundance of meat, meat prices will decrease. Before you jump for joy that meat prices are falling, keep in mind without livestock farmers and ranchers are out of a job and a lifestyle.
While the United States a whole is (Read More....)
 Global Warming, Your Freedoms – And The Man Behind The Curtain by J. Vanne
In the last article, we examined what was behind the frantic global warming push on a philosophical, macro level. In short, global warming is a witch’s brew of Malthusian theory conjoined with Fabian socialism, Margaret Sanger and Edward Bernays (the originator of modern advertising and public manipulation). I have demonstrated how global warming is the vehicle whereby the left would like to create a “USSR of the world” – all for our own good, of course. Perhaps former Czech president Vaclav Klaus and leader of the Czech Velvet Revolution which overthrew the communists in his country summarized it best in Blue Planet in Green Shackles: “Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.” Or, as Nancy Pelosi famously stated "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility." No word, of course, to the (Read More....)
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